True greats rise to the occasion

February 7, 2004 — 11.00pm

9Trevor Chappell's underarm, MCG, 1981 These days, Greg Chappell describes this mad business as a cry for help, a symptom of the fact he was losing his grip, felt unsupported and unfit to lead Australia.

Chappell's decision to direct his younger brother Trevor to bowl the last ball of the day underarm was seen as a shameful moment in Australian cricket which plunged diplomatic relations between Australia and New Zealand to their lowest ebb.

It is often forgotten that back then underarm bowling was legal, as long as the bowler informed the umpire - on that day West Australian Don Weser - who then told the batsman.

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The Kiwis needed 15 from the last over to win the one-day match, the third in the World Series Cup best-of-five finals series. An Australian win would have given Chappell's men a short but badly needed break before a Test series against India. The captain had been battling the Australian Cricket Board about the schedule and other issues, and was nearing his wits' end.

Richard Hadlee hit the first ball for four and was out leg before to the second. Wicketkeeper Ian Smith took twos off the next two balls and was bowled by the fifth. Brian McKechnie, the strapping tailender and former rugby player, who had never hit an international six, came in needing six off the last ball to tie the match.

The 52,990-strong crowd watched in disbelief as Greg Chappell - already unpopular for refusing to go when the Kiwis believed he had been caught by a brilliant Martin Snedden effort in the outfield, before making 90 - instructed his brother to roll the last ball along the ground.

Trevor, remembered for that infamous moment more than any other in his three-Test, 20-ODI career, carried out his brother's instructions despite the protestations of wicketkeeper Rod Marsh. When it was done, the ball blocked away, McKechnie tossed his bat to the ground in disgust.

The fallout was widespread. There were calls for Greg Chappell's sacking, though he was only reprimanded by the ACB and rules were changed to prohibit underarm bowling. New Zealand Prime Minister Robert Muldoon expressed outrage.

One Kiwi newspaper opted for a famous headline, later used by graffiti artists on both sides of the Tasman: "Chappell, your underarm stinks". Chloe Saltau

8 Warne's Gatting ball, Old Trafford, 1993 To those who had followed Shane Warne's fledgling career closely, it came as no great surprise that he was involved in something special at Old Trafford in 1993. No one, however, could have envisaged a ball of such quality.

Warne's previous six months had been notable for his progress from his early beginnings in Test cricket. He'd taken 7-52 to help Australia defeat the West Indies in the Melbourne Test. Then he was Australia's most successful bowler on a three-Test tour of New Zealand two months later, utilising his around-the-wicket tactic for the first time and prompting Martin Crowe to declare him the world's best spinner.

Warne was reasonably confident going into his first Ashes Test. He was unfazed by Graeme Hicks's 170 in a tour match, saying he hadn't yet shown his full repertoire. In fact the team's leaders had instructed him not to show too much in lead-up matches.

The first two days were played in typically gloomy Manchester conditions. Mark Taylor's century was the rock of the Australian innings on day one, though Michael Slater had captured everyone's imagination with his dazzling footwork in his debut 58. By mid-afternoon on day two, England had meandered to 1-80 before Warne was summoned.

Mike Gatting was a good player of spin, but even he couldn't have been prepared for Warne's opening delivery. The leg break swerved in, pitched about 30 centimetres outside leg stump and spun viciously past Gatting's probing forward defensive stroke. No drama, he must have thought, but when he heard the death rattle as the ball cannoned into the top of off stump, he must have thought someone was having a lend of him.

"I was more concerned about being stumped and immediately checked to see where my back foot was," Gatting said. Totally bewildered, he only headed for the pavilion after wicketkeeper Ian Healy reassured him that everything was above board.

The media reaction was incredible. The press box was agog at tea as replay after replay was drooled over by seasoned English cricket writers. The tabloids loved Warne and wanted to know more about this blond from Black Rock. With one delivery, he had transformed an innings, a match and a series.

Warne took four wickets in that innings, eight for the match and 34 for the series. With Tim May he formed Australia's most successful spin partnership in a series, and with the lion-hearted Merv Hughes taking 31 wickets, Australia galloped to a 4-0 series lead before their customary loss in the last Test.

Mere figures don't do justice to Warne's contribution. Spin bowling had been going nowhere; suddenly, spectators at grounds and viewers at home were being treated to a new dimension of cricket watching, and kids everywhere were trying their hand at leg spin.

Gatting was dropped after one more Test and a stranglehold had been placed over English batting which still exists today. Brendan McArdle

7Bradman bats and bats and bats, Headingley, 1930 Don Bradman's 334 in the Leeds Test in 1930 was regarded then, and for many years afterwards, as almost a superhuman feat, both because of the number of runs he scored (nobody had previously reached 300 in a Test) and the speed with which he made them.

Since then, the score has been bettered several times, and people are not as awed by Bradman's rate of scoring. True, he may have reached 100 before lunch (after coming in first wicket down) and ended the day on 309 not out, but, given the faster over rates then, he did face many more balls than a batsman could hope to face today.

So what are the facts? The scoresheet shows that Bradman scored his 334 from 448 balls - a rate of 4.5 runs per six balls faced. In other words, he scored as fast as a one-day team would score if it made 224 from 50 overs.

This is certainly quick, especially against a strong attack on the first day of a Test, but how does it compare with the double centuries scored in the recent Tests against India?

It was faster. Rahul Dravid scored his 233 at Adelaide at 3.1 runs per six balls faced, Sachin Tendulkar his 241 at Sydney at 3.3 and Ricky Ponting his 257 at Melbourne at 3.4.

But Ponting's 242 at Adelaide, which he scored at 4.1 runs per six balls, compares favourably to Bradman's 334, and Matthew Hayden's 380 against Zimbabwe last October was faster. Hayden's scoring rate was 5.2.

An English journalist wrote of Bradman's 334: "It is almost impossible to describe his innings, because it was all of a piece. Any one period of it was just like any other. There was no crescendo and very certainly no diminuendo."

Yet a closer look at the scoresheet shows that Bradman played different bowlers differently and that, in particular, he went after Harold Larwood, the express-pace bowler who was to lead the Bodyline attack in Australia two years later. From the 70 balls Larwood bowled to him, Bradman hit 14 fours and scored 84 runs - a rate of 7.2 per six balls.

Laurence Le Quesne noted in his book The Bodyline Controversy, "Slow bowlers expect to be attacked . . . but for a fast bowler of great pace to be taken by the scruff of the neck and hit all over the field, as Larwood was by Bradman that summer, is the most violent rebuff possible - an experience that might shatter a man's morale, if it could not be avenged." Philip Derriman

6 The Centenary Test,

MCG, 1977 The Centenary Test, organised by the Victorian Cricket Association to commemorate a century of Anglo-Australian Test cricket, was a great celebration before the captains had tossed the coin.

So often in these circumstances, the game does not match the occasion. But the match played at the MCG in March of 1977 takes its place among the great games of cricket by right.

Australia won by 45 runs - the same margin as that of the inaugural Test at the same ground in 1877 - at 5.11pm on the final day. Victory was secured when the indefatigable Dennis Lillee, then the greatest bowler in the world, ripped through Alan Knott's defence, wheeled around in his characteristic appeal for lbw and won the umpire's agreement.

Lillee's teammates chaired him from the field, partly because he was physically spent; partly in admiration.

Nearly 250,000 people attended the match and Test cricket seemed on the surface to be thriving after 100 years, but the delicious irony was to come. Within a few months, the game was split by the World Series Cricket revolution and the defection of key players to Kerry Packer's troupe. That they had been secretly lured during the Centenary Test would add to the sense of betrayal among the traditional powers of the game.

The 1977 Test was a blockbuster with many sub-plots. With every living Test player from both nations invited to the match, the participants were overawed by the sense of history.

Certainly it looked that way when Australia made just 138 and England a paltry 95 (Lillee 6-26) in the first innings, so that the planned visit of the Queen and Prince Philip on the fifth day was threatened.

But there was a settling period, and Rod Marsh's second-innings 110 not out, the first century by an Australian wicketkeeper in England-Australia Test matches, gave his team the edge.

That opener Rick McCosker would help Marsh post his century by coming out to bat at No.10, despite having had his jaw broken by a Bob Willis lifter in the first innings, only heightened the drama.

McCosker had his jaw wired and his face swathed in bandages, and he could not open his mouth to breathe. Marsh asked him after a couple of deliveries how he was coping and recalled afterwards that he was promptly told to "mind your business and get on and make your hundred".

The New South Welshman made possibly the most famous 25 runs in Tests, but it is safe to say that David Hookes encapsulated his career in the space of the five consecutive off-spinners from Tony Greig, the England captain, which he dispatched to the boundary.

Hookes threatened to destroy England but, characteristically, was soon out for 56, and Australia's 9(dec)-419 left England with 463 to win.

Greig's team managed 417, an astonishing feat on a wearing wicket. For all the heroics that had gone on, Derek Randall's 174 gave England a hint of a chance on the final day and earned him man-of-the-match honours.

A Lillee bouncer cracked into his skull, and still the doughty Englishman managed a smile as he rubbed the bump. At 161, he was adjudged to be caught behind and was part-way off the field when Marsh called him back, indicating that the ball had touched the ground first. So many twists.

With the tension building, Lillee delivered the goods, as was his wont. Clocking up more than 34 overs, battling fatigue and bowling off a reduced run-up, he mopped up the English tail to finish with 11 wickets for the match. Martin Blake